Egyptian Accelerator Flat6Labs Graduates First Cycle of Tech Startups

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Egypt’s newest seed stage accelerator, Flat6Labs, has
graduated its first group of startups, culminating in a Demo Day at
their Cairo center on Sunday.

After three months of mentorship and training that included seed
investment of $8-10,000 for an equity stake of 10-15%, the five
cycle 0 startups showcased their work to over 40 potential
investors and Flat6Lab’s mentors.

All of the startups were tech related, as Flat6Labs focuses
exclusively on the IT sector. and yet each addressed a different
issue in Egyptian society. Ekshef in particular aimed to enhance
efficiency at local hospitals, by helping patients find and book
doctor appointments online or on their mobile device.

Careerise aimed to address the press needs for better
recruitment in Egyptian society, by leveraging social networks.
“Most job recruitment in Egypt happens through personal referrals,”
explained Flat6Labs CEO Ramez Mohamed. “Careerise leverages a
user’s Twitter or Facebook account to showcase the knowledge bases
of people you know.” This makes the service not unlike Facebook-based job relevance platform
Identified, although Careerise focuses more on adding online
networks to offline information and less on quantifying one’s
relevance to a job position.

While these two have a local focus, Careerise has plans to
expand to the Gulf. Fitting with its goal of accelerating scalable
ideas, Flat6Labs encourages all of its startups to scale regionally
at the very least, if not globally, says Mohamed.

The other three apps focus on online platforms that were global
products from day one. Snapze helps users find the best way to
spend their time, and F16Apps’s product Neatly is mobile
application that rearranges one’s Twitter timeline according to
interests rather than chronology. Last but not least, Tabshora,
which debuted at Startup Weekend Cairo last year, helps creative
community members communicate easily with their clients and
peers.

What’s next for the startups now that they are officially out
the door is the obvious step of garnering funding. While Flat6Labs
has helped the startups develop their business plans, prototypes,
and management skills over these three months, it doesn’t want to
be too hands on at this stage, says Mohamed. “We are on the board
of each company, so we will certainly help them, but we want to
give them the space to work on their own,” he insists.

And it’s not just the startups that are making their way.
Flat6Labs itself, which was started by Egyptian venture capital
firm Sawari Ventures, in conjunction with the American Uinversity of Cairo (AUC) School of Business
Entrepreneurship & Innovation Program (EIP), is learning as
well and iterating its model following cycle 0. Ahmed Alfi,
Chairman of Sawari Ventures, and Ayman Ismail, Abdul Latif Jameel
Endowed Chair of Entrepreneurship in Entrepreneurship at AUC play a
guiding role.

“We are enhancing and modifying our structure based on our
findings from this cycle,” says Mohamed. “We’re planning to focus
the training towards the beginning of the cycle rather than having
it continue throughout the process. We’re also looking to bring in
more established entrepreneurs as mentors and speakers.”

A final goal, he says, is building more cohesion in the angel
investment space. Hopefully this will speak to a complaint voiced
by some startups throughout the Middle East and North Africa- the
ecosystem is fragmented, where cohesion could offer more
consistency in terms and expectations.

Nina is director of Launchpad UAE, a platform that fosters the development and execution of social impact enterprises and corporate social responsibility initiatives, for sustainable environmental, economic and human capital development. Previously she was editor-in-chief at Wamda and more recently managing director of Flat6Labs Abu Dhabi.